Collaborative Research: ENTeR: Enabling NeTwork Research and the Evolution of a Next Generation Midscale Research Infrastructure

在过去的十年中，全球网络创新环境（GENI）支持了广泛的网络和计算系统研究，包括未来互联网架构、软件定义网络（SDN）、无线和移动网络、网络硬件和软件方法、网络应用、网络监控、网络安全、未来云、分布式计算和边缘云以及智慧城市。GENI的主要贡献包括通过标准抽象、api和安全策略开发用于供应、访问和编程分布式网络基础设施的联合方法。实验仍在继续，越来越多的GENI用户将其作为研究和教育工具来使用。最近的GENI实验包括评估未来的百亿亿级系统、保护科学工作流程、定义和测试新的软件定义交换（SDX）架构、网络安全研究以及路由和传输协议评估。该提案名为“使能网络研究和下一代中等规模研究基础设施的发展”（ENTeR），旨在更新、调整、操作和维护现有的GENI基础设施，为期两年，以支持正在进行的大规模网络研究实验。同时，该项目将从事下一代实验研究基础设施的规划。ENTeR将促进从GENI向一个能够支持更大的实验研究社区的新平台的过渡。ENTeR团队的主要重点将是确保大多数研究人员所需的GENI基础设施的关键部分仍然可用和相关。GENI将扩大其作为国家实验网络基础设施(如NSF未来云（即变色龙云和CloudLab）和高级无线研究平台（PAWR）等各种元素之间互连结构的作用，将它们连接到校园网并提供丰富的新实验功能。该项目将为学生提供机会，让他们在实时分布式基础设施上工作，解决实际问题，并开发软件解决方案，供大型研究人员社区使用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Over the past decade the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) has supported a wide range of networking and computing systems research into future internet architectures, Software Defined Networking (SDN), wireless and mobile networks, network hardware and software approaches, network applications, network monitoring, network security, future clouds, distributed computing and edge clouds, and smart cities. GENI has been credited with key contributions including developing a federated approach for provisioning, accessing, and programming distributed cyberinfrastructure through standard abstractions, APIs, and security policies. Experimentation continues today, executed by a growing number of GENI users who are using it both as a research and an educational tool. Recent GENI experiments include work on evaluating future exascale systems, securing scientific workflows, defining and testing novel Software Define eXchange (SDX) architectures, network security research, and routing and transport protocol evaluations.This proposal, Enabling NeTwork Research and the Evolution of a Next Generation Midscale Research Infrastructure (ENTeR) seeks to update, adapt, operate and maintain the existing GENI infrastructure for a two year time period in order to support ongoing at-scale network research experiments. At the same time, the project will engage in planning for next generation experimental research infrastructure. ENTeR will facilitate the transition from GENI to a new platform capable of supporting a much larger experimental research community. The ENTeR team's primary focus will be to ensure that the critical portions of the GENI infrastructure needed by the majority of researchers remain available and relevant. GENI will expand its role as an interconnect fabric between various elements of national experimental cyber infrastructure like NSF Future Clouds (i.e., Chameleon Cloud and CloudLab) and the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Resesearch (PAWR), linking them to campus networks and offering a rich set of new experimental capabilities. This project will provide opportunities for students to work on live distributed infrastructure, troubleshoot real problems, and develop software solutions that will be used by a large community of researchers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.